GLASTONBURY ROMANCE 2003:

THE DAEMONIC GENIUS OF JOHN COWPER POWYS.

Video lecture

Here is a 40 min lecture I gave to the Powys Society Conference in August 2010, not long after Avalonian Aeon was published.

Thanks to Raymond Cox of the Powys Society for permission to reproduce.

Why did it take me over ten years to write Avalonian Aeon? There are good answers here. I always knew that the book would feature John Cowper Powys in a big way as I wanted to convey the extent of his influence and inspiration upon me. It seemed likely that I would need to re-read his thousand-page epic novel A Glastonbury Romance again. I actually ended up reading it 3 times in a 12 month period. This seems absurd but quite remarkable events occurred during that time which seem inseparable from my readings of the novel. These events were powerful and disturbing. I make my case for the artist as magician and Powys as one of the great magi of Glastonbury in that he communicated something vital about the place that none of the other luminaries of his time, Dion Fortune and Frederick Bligh Bond for example, managed to do.

So here is a complementary telling of my story of Abraxas in the Abbey also told in my Crowley and Jung lecture and the story of a terrible murder.

The contents of this lecture have since been published in my Glastonbury Psychogeography.

MAGICAL BATTLE OF BRITAIN VIDEO

Here is a video of a recent Glastonbury presentation of mine on subject matter I keep returning to over a period of decades. It is nearly 2 hours long and features a brief visualisation about halfway through.

On this occasion I tried to cover some material I haven’t spoken about in public before. I believe there are some unique perspectives presented.

I thank Samia and Dave for inviting me to do it in full knowledge of the nature of the material involved.

Initial impetus from a conversation with Divyael.

Also yay to Chillfilms who recorded the basic footage.

I have added some imagery and music.

This is an incredibly strange, powerful, intense, potentially disturbing story. It is most definitely adult material and includes some strong language. If easily triggered, do not watch!

Twenty years after the events described I feel that I can’t wait any longer to get it out there in some form. I’ve always intended to write a book about it but I have no idea when I might find the time to do this justice and I have never felt that this extraordinary tale was just for me so I’m uploading it for all those who might be going through their own distinctly weird spiritual dramas in the modern world and looking for some maps of the territory to assist them.

After I turned into a dolphin in Glastonbury and took Reiki and Osho sannyas initiations in the same week, I was thrown into an extraordinary initiatory ordeal involving past lives, serial killers, Sai Baba, a Kali machete murder, the Southend werewolf, and the Whore of Babylon. This is a tale of how Shakti Kundalini does its thing in the modern world.

SLEEPWALKING INTO WAR: GURDJIEFF AND OUSPENSKY

Gurdjieff.

Whenever this country gets involved in a war, I exhale wearily with the recognition that sleepwalking humanity is at it again. I am thankful to have encountered the ideas of Gurdjieff, expressed to the brilliant mind of PD Ouspensky, in the perfect circumstances of the Great War and Russian Revolution. They have provided me with a grim understanding of these situations for some decades now. I first read Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous in 1982. It became my most-read book of the decade. Here is some material adapted from my Avalonian Aeon on the subject.

Gurdjieff’s critique of the general state of humanity seemed pessimistic at first. He stated that most of us can be said to be asleep in a trance of distraction. Each of us believes in a unique individuality but, on closer examination, most cannot demonstrate any real unity of functioning. We are full of small separate personalities. One part may proudly proclaim the intention to stop smoking, take up a regime of exercise, follow some idealised spiritual path etc. The “I” that likes to smoke or overeat or take drugs, be sexually deranged and so on, will later on assert its own claims and the lofty talk will be worthless. We have many I’s. They can all be “caliph for an hour”. Work on oneself involves the conscious cultivation of a “magnetic centre”. It is the responsibility of this aspect of oneself to seek out those influences conducive to the maintaining and expansion of its function.

What does that mean in the real world? The feeling of it can be better grasped by looking at it alongside another of Gurdjieff’s teaching ideas. Ouspensky discusses the concept of “food.” He takes it beyond the usual definitions. As well as what we eat in the normal sense, the case is made for regarding air as food. If anyone thinks it isn’t, try living without it for a while. Most stimulating of all was the classification of “impressions” as food. What we input through our senses can nourish or poison us. To take an extreme example, a person feasting everyday on splatter movies, hardcore porn and horror, someone who regularly read the literature of hate, racism etc, would be thoroughly poisoning themselves. Contrariwise, a person who immersed themselves in great art, literature, music, and the religious classics of the world, with a view to changing themselves for the better, would be getting some kind of higher food vitamins and protein. Although just what constitutes appropriate input is hugely debatable and variable, the basic principle is a call to some sort of conscious awakening. Gurdjieff suggested that once this process was really in motion, somehow one magnetically attracted to oneself the necessary higher influences. The world was full of them, but to the average tranced-out sleepwalking person they were all but invisible.

The historical situation in Russia during the period that the two worked together was a perfect backdrop for the demonstration of the power of Gurdjieff’s ideas. It began with the archaic Romanoff dynasty still in place as the First World War broke out. Gradually, insane chaos emerged. Russia’s badly led, ill-equipped forces were trashed by the German war-machine. Morale nosedived. The rumblings of the revolution were heard. Before long, a whole dynasty and culture was swept away and Ouspensky faced exile or death. For people with a feeling for history those events in Russia are amongst the most mind-blowing of the twentieth century.

Ideas that may have seemed outlandish or pessimistic were revealed by the events of the time to be spine-tinglingly insightful. Ouspensky resisted at first but the horror of the situation helped him to understand. Gurdjieff had said that we are machines, slaves to certain natural laws and processes that are as mechanical as a motor car. If people were remotely awake they would never submit to going off to war and likely death. The leaders of great nations are likewise sleepwalkers through the strange workings of unknown dynamics.

Ouspensky had difficulties with these ideas until an event he witnessed brought them to life. He saw a truck loaded with artificial limbs on its way to the front. They were for legs that had not yet been blown off but it could be calculated that they would be. There was something so mechanical about this process, something so lacking in conscious awareness, that the insanity of the situation was revealed in all its ludicrous horror. If those legs hadn’t been blown off yet then why on earth did they have to be? The process was surely stoppable. On one occasion, when Gurdjieff was discussing the horror of the war and the hollowness of the ideals it was being fought for, someone asked him what he thought of the pacifists? “They’re even worse,” was his classic reply.

There was a particular function of the mass sleepwalking mind that helped perpetuate the trance that enabled the world-historical madness to continue. Gurdjieff called it “Formatory Thinking”. It is basically that process whereby people are compelled to think and feel in terms of opposites such as black and white, wrong or right, left and right, and so on. This manifests in rigidity in one’s personal life and in the greater horrors of religious conflicts and wars between rival political systems. I could see it being played out all around me. It had turned British political life into a vulgar cartoon. On the larger stage Ronnie “Rapture” Reagan stood against the evil empire of the Godless Commies and megadeath was a possible outcome.

PD Ouspensky

When the first Gulf War was imminent I turned to In Search of the Miraculous again. It had never felt more potent. The 1990 equivalent of those trucks full of artificial limbs that had awakened Ouspensky to the horror of the situation were on their way to the front once more. This time it was helicopters loaded with body-bags. Casualty calculations were being made. All sorts of jargon masked the terrifying reality. It was gratifying when seeing Robert Anton Wilson lecture in London whilst the war was actually being fought also mention the very same point, Ouspensky’s trucks and the 1990 body bags.

And so it goes on. Our responsibility is to cultivate a centre of gravity beyond the pull of formatory thinking and to actually become part of the conscious circle of humanity.

CROWLEY AND JUNG. THE BOOK OF THE LAW AND SEVEN SERMONS.

A year ago today I gave a presentation at a conference in Glastonbury on some of my favorite material from my book Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus. From the chapter Gnostic Revival I discussed the strange commonality between two fundamental experiences in the lives of the apparently very different Aleister Crowley and CG Jung. Crowley had been led in 1904, after a series of strange experiences to write, supposedly over a three-day period, The Book of the Law. This was the most important experience of his life and he extensively promoted it. In 1916 Jung also wrote a mysterious text, The Seven Sermons to the Dead. It was likewise a vital episode in his development but one that he kept very much in the background.

The video of my presentation that day, which I have posted on this blog, didn’t do justice to the visuals I had assembled so I wondered about making them into a video on their own. I have made considerable additions and adjustments. Text was obviously now necessary. A soundtrack of early classic Tangerine Dream was added. I’m very happy with the results. It’s just over half an hour long. I recommend headphones and dimmed lights for best results!

Landscape zodiac? Ancient Astronauts? UFO contact? Visions and quests. From Glastonbury to Giza. A sympathetic look at wild ideas. Experience the mood of my new book through vivid visuals and soothing sounds. Buy it on Amazon UK and USA.

I expanded a powerpoint presentation I recently gave to include more explanatory text and imagery and then added a soundtrack.

Video is 20 mins long and features the track Four Ever Rainbow from Rainbow Dome Musick by Steve Hillage.

NEW BOOK:

THE GLASTONBURY ZODIAC & EARTH MYSTERIES UFOLOGY

After a long convoluted process, I have manifested a new book. Just over a month ago, the idea to do so was not even in my head.

Some of you may be aware that 2 years ago I was invited to write an extended introduction to a projected new edition of the classic seventies anthology, Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem. It was conceived as a joint enterprise with another party. I also commissioned Yuri Leitch to create the cover art-work to my design, a Glastonbury version of the Crowley/Harris Sun tarot card that recalled the original anthology cover.

1977 edition

Intended new cover

Time passed and my collaborator stalled on the project. At the start of 2015 I arranged to give a presentation at the Glastonbury Symposium conference (still often known as the Crop Circle conference) on the contents of my introduction. I felt this still gave enough time to get the new edition published. By the time of the summer solstice it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen. I suddenly wondered if it might be possible to expand my intro and get a small book out in time for the Symposium. My graphics man and the publisher gave me the thumbs-up leaving me about two weeks to do it.

I decided to pump-up the text with some material drawn from my other books but presented in a distinct new chronological context. The centre of gravity of the book was always going to be unique material concerning a profound UFO experience of Anthony Roberts (editor of the original anthology) in 1969 and a huge wild ancient astronaut Atlantean Glastonbury tome that he was inspired to write soon afterwards. His wife Jan had given me access to the work and I was the first person outside the Roberts’ household to read it in 40 years.

Anthony Roberts by his beloved Glastonbury Tor where he died of a heart attack in 1990.

Tony Roberts with his unpublished work, Giants in the Earth, the main stimulus for my new book.

It was an amazing experience to initiate and complete this new project so quickly after spending two years in limbo with its original form.

Here is the back cover blurb.

The Glastonbury Zodiac and Earth Mysteries UFOlogy

is a unique exploration of a visionary realm that helped to shape the modern development of the mystical capital of Britain. It shows the influence of ideas concerning Atlantis and Ancient Astronauts during the heady days of the sixties and seventies and places them alongside ley lines and the landscape zodiac.

Includes:

remarkable previously untold UFO experience of author Anthony Roberts and the huge unpublished book it inspired.

Katharine Maltwood, Mary Caine, Oliver Reiser: from Blavatsky to Arthur’s Round Table, wandering Sumerians, Atlanteans and aliens, the head of Christ, and the morphogenetic field pattern for the embryogenesis of the World Sensorium!